Hard drive failiure

[letsmakeamark]

Does anybody know wy there is a clicking noise coming from my wetern digital caviar 640gb hard drive ? Pc is not recognising it. When i boot up windows its freezes at the windows start up screen ? When the drive is connected everything seems to be very slow. As soon as the drive is disconnected everything speeds up ?

[leigh04]

sounds like hard drive is on its way or has failed, does your BIOS pick the hard drive up?

[letsmakeamark]

No. However when i run the packard bell doctor it shows the hard drive as working and it passes its tests. When i put it in another pc it recognised it. However it did freeze the other pc as well. As soon as i removed the data connection the pc picked its speed up.

[dx100uk]

sounds like the ever popular nylon arm bearing has failed

 

how old is it?

 

WDC are covered for 3 yrs i think

 

go on the site and type in your serial number

 

they are VERY GOOD

 

at replacing even old drives that have failed

 

if its years old

 

hold it flat

and give it a good bang on a solid wooden surface

 

you can sometimes jump the arm off the central spindle.

 

dx

[stu007]

Agree with dx

 

but have you checked all the cables that none are loose?

 

When was the last time you gave your computer/laptop a good clean out (on the inside that is) I say this as kept getting blue screen of death about a yr ago ended up opened laptop gave it a good spring clean and it was a small piece of foam that was blocking the fan causing it to overheat never had a problem since.

 

just an option to consider first.

[letsmakeamark]

I gave this a clean in November last year. There was a lot of fluff above the processor and also under the fan. I also cleaned the main cpu and mother board etc out as well. Again a load of fluff etc.

 

The hard drive came in a Compaq desktop from comets which is 2 years old.

 

I have checked on website and it says contact vendor as sold to a computer builder.

 

I will give it a tap and see what happens.

[letsmakeamark]

sounds like the ever popular nylon arm bearing has failed

 

how old is it?

 

WDC are covered for 3 yrs i think

 

go on the site and type in your serial number

 

they are VERY GOOD

 

at replacing even old drives that have failed

 

if its years old

 

hold it flat

and give it a good bang on a solid wooden surface

 

you can sometimes jump the arm off the central spindle.

 

dx

 

 

Tried this but have got no where. Is it possible to buy a smaller size hard drive ie a 120gb and transfer the spindle into it or would i be better off with the same size ? Also what size screws or torx would i need to open it with and also is there a shield underneath the cover that i need to be aware of ?

[renegadeimp]

Tried this but have got no where. Is it possible to buy a smaller size hard drive ie a 120gb and transfer the spindle into it or would i be better off with the same size ? Also what size screws or torx would i need to open it with and also is there a shield underneath the cover that i need to be aware of ?

 

Not wise, if not impossible without destroying the HDD completely. Have a google on how a HHD is structured and youll see what i mean.

 

The only thing i can suggest is you use it as a secondary HDD in an error free machine, and try to salvage it using some software. If that fails, then give it a few HEAVY bangs ( not psychotic ones), or just bin it and grab a new spinner drive.

 

To be honest though, since the HDD sounds like it is pretty much done for, look into grabbing a 128GB SSD for your boot drive, then grabbing a cheap and cheerful spinner drive for storage.

 

Take my current setup for example. 4 128GB SSD's . 1 used purely for a full stripped down version of win 7 ( no other programs installed), the other 3 in raid 0 for my main applications for work. I then have 3 x 2tb spinner drives for storage. Games, movies, other junk etc.

 

You may think this costs a lot, but honestly, the only thing that cost any real amount of money was a decent mainboard and some good DAC's ( cant use mobo based ones for the apps i use).

 

 

I cant remember the last time any of my drives failed. But i guess i should look into redundancy arrays

Edited June 7, 2013 by renegadeimp

[letsmakeamark]

I know the layout of a hard drive its the physical case i am interested in. Does the case have a shield under neath it or just a cover ? Reason i am asking is all of the caviar blues have the same speed etc but have different storage sizes. Hence could i remove a platter from a 640g drive and put it in place of a smaller drive ?

[renegadeimp]

It isnt wise st all to remove a platter. Or even open the hdd if you want to use anything on it again.

If you want to try youll need specific tools and an identical hdd. That means same model and firmware number. However if there is any sign of damage on the platter then you might as well stop as the data would be irretrievable.

There are a few guides on google but you need some specific technical know how to do it correcyly.